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To Sphinn or Not to Sphinn - That is the Question!

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

A while back I removed all of the social media bookmark links from my blog. At the time, my reasoning was that it was simply cluttering up the page and really added no value. It also looked rather silly to have 15 icons at the bottom of each post so that someone might bookmark it.

I'd actually add it back in if:

A) I thought there were some value in doing so.

B) Readers didn't find it a nuisance.

C) It didn't slow the page load time down any.

Comments?

Along the same lines of thinking, I was considering just adding Sphinn to my blog because many of the topics I write about are SEO-related in some form or fashion and Sphinn seems to target that market.

However, having said that, I've yet to see any reviews of Sphinn and whether it drives any decent traffic or not. Do the visitors stick around? What are their demographics? Anyone have any comments on this?

9 Comments

As a relative newcomer to this particular section of the technology world, I must say that I find it sad when I see a lot of Social Bookmarks and the page has never been voted on. It says "0 Diggs" etc. It looks bad to someone like me who had to go and investigate what these things were before I understood that "0 Diggs" does not necessarily mean that the content is bad.

I think having icons for niche bookmark sites might not be so bad since people are more likely to add a site about internet marketing to an internet marketing service. I have just see a lot of these Digg buttons lately and most of them have between 0 and 5 diggs, which isn't impressive. Better off without, IMO.

I think sphinn is more useful for getting in front of particular industry people than for driving volumes of traffic. Depending on what you are writing about, a sphinn button could be useful, but we're not going to go down the route of putting one on every post...

Shpinn delivers ~200+ visitors for a story that goes hot. I imagine that number jumps if the story stays hot. The advantage of Shpinn is that it is your market and industry so it is a great place to get attention and even pick up some links from related sites.

Typically, the people that need SEO / PPC services are people that really don't know that those sites exist. I don't spend much time putting those links on those sites because personally, I think there are better uses of time which produce better ROI.

I have had those social bookmarking buttons at one time as well , but reoved them as well,

I look at it this way, If I like a site enough, I would do whatever I had to do to show my friends and others,

I mean when I step back and take a look at how I recommend sites now that aren't my own now, I think to myself,...wow I just emailed that link , or I could have even called someone and told the to visit the url.

For me, my focus is making the content 100% awesome, and then I think people will just recommend it / link to it no matter what type of "bookmarking" Icons I have on there,

I think at times, I just need to take my webmaster shoes off and look at my sites from a "vistor" point of view

Good to hear you're getting better G-man. You've consistently been one of my favourite bloggers here at SEOmoz, particularly with your specialized knowledge. The new site looks alright, if a bit plain. But then, you're a kickass programmer, so it fits!

On a relevant note, I've been interested in this as well. I think I'll have four on my site, and four only: Sphinn, Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. They seem to be the biggest/provide the greatest value/most important.

I don't think there is a lot of value in adding the buttons to my site. I feel that if someone uses Del.icio.us or whatever than they have a system of posting the content they like. Whether it is a toolbar or copy and paste - if they like it they will share it.